


the cabin at the end of the world

by fitzroysquare



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Book 5: Only Human (Doctor Who), Gen, M/M, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, The Hope Foundation, The Lives of Captain Jack (Big Finish Audio) - Freeform, The Year After I Died, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28558131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzroysquare/pseuds/fitzroysquare
Summary: One dirty rip engine, a bad trip through the vortex, and the Torchwood team find themselves on Earth in the year 200,101.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 23
Kudos: 38





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Big Finish's The Lives of Captain Jack: The Year After I Died  
> ...  
> Takes place after S1Ep1 KKBB

Ianto gasped into consciousness, blinking furiously at the world while desperately trying to remember how exactly he had come to be squished between the deployed airbag of the SUV and the passenger’s seat. The last thing he remembered was going to check out a rift flare with the rest of the Torchwood team, arriving on the scene only to find a piece of tech no bigger than the palm of a hand. Ianto also remembered Jack quirking his lip at the object as if it reminded him of a fond memory.

At the time, Ianto half wanted to ask Jack about the piece of tech the Rift tossed out, but given that Jack hadn’t even offered an unbelievable and seemingly embellished story of how he used the object in question to rescue some alien princess or to incite a planet-wide revolution, Ianto had decided it was probably better to wait until they were alone to ask. He didn’t remember the piece of tech acting up in an odd way as they loaded it into a containment box or it emitting strange sounds as they drove back to the Hub, but given that it was, you know, Torchwood, Ianto would bet his favourite suit that it was that object which was responsible for whatever had just happened.

But Ianto realised that there was no time to think about it as he turned his head right to check on Jack, only to see that he was dead. Jack’s lifeless eyes stared into nothingness as what was once the driver’s door and part of the car hood was hopelessly crushed into Jack’s body.

“Shit,” Ianto breathed out, hoping that Jack’s death, at least, was quick and painless. There were a lot of things that Ianto found unnerving when Jack died, because Jack dying was never a sign of a good time, ever, but Ianto found that the thing that caused his breath to catch in throat was having to see the utter stillness of Jack’s body after each death.

It seemed fundamentally wrong that Jack, whose entire body vibrated with life, would just...be empty of it. Jack would be back though, as he always did and always would. Ianto still wasn’t quite sure if Jack was born like this (seemed unlikely) or made in some kind of experiment (also seemed unlikely), but Jack never offered and Ianto sensed that this would be one of those things that he would never really know.

It was alright, though. Ianto had accepted a long time ago that Jack was just Jack. Frustratingly enigmatic and charmingly fun all at once.

Sounds emerging from the backseat of the SUV distracted Ianto once again from his thoughts.

Turning his head, Ianto breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Tosh, Gwen, and Owen- all three slightly banged up but looking to be relatively unharmed and as far as he could tell, alive. Which, when it came to Torchwood, tended to be the only thing that really mattered at the end of the day.

“What the hell happened?” Owen forced out, clearly still disoriented. “It feels like we just went through a bloody blender.”

“Don’t know yet,” Ianto replied, testing the handle of his door to see if it still worked. “Jack’s dead, though.” It took a bit of strength and grunting, but Ianto finally got his car door open, stumbling out.

Once out, Ianto pulled the passenger door open, finding Tosh cradling her head with one hand and the other hand operating the PDA, already checking for anything that could explain their current situation. Next to her in the middle seat, Gwen looked stiff and unnaturally still, but looking more closely Ianto could see that the rise and fall of her chest meant that she was still alive and just out cold.

“Hey Tosh, let’s get you out,” Ianto said.

“Thanks Ianto,” Tosh shakily said, sliding out of the SUV and using Ianto to steady herself. “You alright?”

“A little bit dizzy, but I think I’m fine.”

“Oi!” Owen said, from inside the car. “I’ll be the judge of that. Gwen’s unconscious but otherwise fine, Jack’s clearly not but will be soon, but either of you could have concussions. Especially you, Jones.”

“Yeah?” Ianto said, climbing into the SUV to check on Gwen and Owen. “What about you? You’re being only slightly cranky compared to the usual Owen level of stroppiness. I’m sure that’s a cause for concern.”

Owen opened his mouth, clearly ready to retort some cutting remark, but before he got the change he was interrupted by the loud gasp of Jack coming back to life. Jack, who then instead of putting on a grin and spouting out a smartass remark like after so many of his other deaths, started to gasp and choke for air.

“Jack!” Ianto abandoned Gwen’s side, pushing himself backwards out the car and running around the side of the SUV to Jack’s door, Tosh closely behind him. The car door was crushed inward, but with Tosh’s help, Ianto managed to pry it open a little, giving them a better look at Jack, who had died again.

A piece of metal, which Ianto had failed to spot earlier, was lodged in Jack’s gut, piercing through Jack’s shirt though not his greatcoat. Ianto was already reaching to pull the piece of metal when Tosh’s hand reached out and stopped him.

“Wait,” she said. “We need to get some kind of towel or glove. Otherwise, you’re going to cut yourself.”

Grateful, though too caught up in worry to immediately respond, Ianto scrambled around the car back to the front seat where he had been sitting minutes earlier.

“There should be something like that in the SUV,” he said, navigating around the still deployed airbag to pry open the glovebox. “God knows we have everything in here.” As Ianto rummaged through the compartment, he drew out a Glenn Miller CD (out of its case), an unused tea bag, lube (half used), a metal grappling hook (which genuinely confused Ianto), and a flat rock he was pretty sure was alien in origin. Everything but the kitchen sink, indeed.

Distantly, Ianto heard the sounds of Gwen stirring and finally regaining consciousness, but he was too caught up in his search of the SUV compartment to divide his attention. Owen could handle it, anyways.

Finally, Ianto found what he was looking for. “Got it!” he yelled, triumphantly, holding up a pair of gloves that were used a week ago during a rift retrieval. He normally would have cleaned out the SUV afterwards, but that night Jack had been pretty determined to distract him from doing so. And then, well, Ianto had been thoroughly distracted for the rest of the night. And the next night too. So, it never had gotten fully cleaned.

Returning to Jack’s side of the car with the gloves, Ianto saw that Tosh had managed to pry the crushed door open a little bit more, giving better access to Jack’s body. With the gloves on, Ianto yanked the piece of metal out of Jack’s gut, grimincing from the dripping blood and the sound of metal sliding out of flesh. After tossing the piece of metal away, Ianto and Tosh carefully maneuvered Jack’s body out of the driver’s seat, setting his body down next to the wreckage of the SUV.

There wasn’t anything they could do now but wait for Jack to gasp back into life. Ianto knelt down next to Jack’s body, lifting his head so it rested on Ianto’s lap. Sitting there, Ianto waited for the gasp that signaled Jack’s return from death.

Like everything else that accompanied Jack’s death, Ianto hated the gasp that Jack made every time he came back from the dead, sounding as if life itself was so overwhelming that instead of it being a gift, it was a painful burden. But Ianto supposed that maybe that was just a fact of life. After all, he still thought of the wreckage of Canary Wharf and the aftermath of it, when every reminder of being alive was so exhausting and overwhelming that if it hadn’t been for Lisa he might have just given up.

Lisa. Now that was a name that still made his chest tighten. But it wasn’t a good time to delve into those thoughts so Ianto didn’t. There were more important things in the present.

Like Jack, gasping to life in Ianto’s lap.

“Hey you,” Jack said, grinning at Ianto before looking down at his chest and spotting the huge stain of blood right in the center of his shirt. “So. Looks like the shirt is a goner but not the coat. That still counts as a win, right?”

“Only to you, sir,” Ianto replied back, smiling but trying to dampen his concern about Jack. It was rare that Jack died twice in quick succession. The last time Ianto remembered that happening was Abaddon and well...that wasn’t a good memory for anyone involved.

Getting to their feet, Jack and Ianto joined Tosh, Owen, and Gwen, who had regained consciousness and was currently squinting at the SUV as if the battered heap would provide the answers to the universe.

“So,” Gwen said, speaking to the group though her eyes never strayed from the wreckage. “We go on a rift retrieval. We pick up a piece of tech. And the next thing we know, we’ve been kicked around like a football and the SUV is completely totalled. Any theories?”

She looked at Jack, expectantly. Tosh, Owen, and Ianto followed suit.

Jack sighed, moving around to the trunk side of the SUV, seeing if he could pry it open.

“The thing we picked up? It’s called a rip engine,” Jack said, successfully prying the trunk open. “It’s a nasty form of time travel. Completely unreliable. I mean, look what happened to us! Barely even touched it and it sent us spiraling through the vortex. There’s a good reason those things were banned.”

Jack pulled out the containment box, in which the now named rip engine was surprisingly still intact despite the wrecked nature of the SUV.

“But that means we can use the rip engine to get back, right?” Tosh asked. Ianto could already see her mind racing to calculate how they could do it.

Just for a moment, Jack hesitated. Ianto wasn’t sure if anyone else had caught it, but by now Ianto had grown used to watching out for the little things. It was what Jack didn’t say that revealed more than the words that actually did come out of his mouth.

“Possibly,” Jack said, shrugging nonchalantly. “But right now it’s more important that we figure out when and where we are.”

“Well, obviously we’re not in Cardiff,” Gwen said, glancing at their surroundings. “And probably not in the 21st century. Look around. These aren’t buildings that I’ve ever seen before. And frankly, it looks like this was either a warzone or someone had a lot of fun with a wrecking ball.”

Gwen wasn’t exaggerating. They were standing in a city where every building on the street was damaged or vandalised in some way. And if that wasn’t alarming enough, wherever they were was completely deserted. Just the Torchwood team and the breeze.

Then it became the Torchwood team, the breeze, and cheerful elevator music as a floating screen flew around the corner right in front of Gwen, startling her into taking a step back while Owen’s curses were drowned out by the music playing.

“The Hope Foundation,” a voice emerging from the floating screen narrated while a blue coloured logo filled the center of it. “Offering you a better chance at life. Please touch the screen for further information.”

“Uh,” Gwen said, hesitating, looking at Jack and then back at the screen. “Should I…”

“Don’t bother,” said Jack, rolling his eyes. “They’re just annoying HD mosquitos.” He directed his next words at the screen: “Go away. We’re not interested.”

The screen, which Ianto found more than slightly creepy and seeming like a bad omen of what was to come, flew away, leaving the Torchwood team alone in the middle of the street again.

“Well,” Jack spoke again. “At least I know now where and when we are. Earth. The year 200,101.”

He didn’t sound happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line about the Hope Foundation is directed quoted from Big Finish's The Lives of Captain Jack: The Year After I Died.


	2. chapter two

They were half an hour into walking when Gwen voiced what everybody was thinking.

“So,” she said, glancing at Jack. “How much longer until we get there?”

“Oh, you know,” Jack said, his voice carefully light. “We’ll get there when we get there. Just a little farther.” The nonchalant tone of his voice did little to satisfy the group and despite his best efforts, they could hear a slight tightness seeping into it as he shifted his arms around the containment box holding the rip engine. 

It seemed that the longer they walked, the more unnerved Jack seemed to get. Ianto didn’t quite understand why, but also couldn’t find it in himself to fault him. They had been walking for half an hour and it seemed that Earth in 200,101 was...not doing well. To put it lightly.

It looked like wherever they had landed really had been a warzone. They hadn’t seen a single building that wasn’t destroyed in some way and had yet to actually come across any people. There had been occasional sounds of things scuttling in dark alleys or the shuffle of feet behind them, but Ianto couldn’t be sure of whether they were people or animals. And he wasn’t completely sure that he wanted to know.

Jack’s refusal to talk about it when he clearly knew what happened didn’t help Ianto’s feelings on everything either. Ianto was unsettled, by the destruction that he was seeing of Earth’s distant future, the fact that he had just time travelled hundreds of thousands of years in a near second, and having to deal with a Jack who had reverted back to his frustratingly annoying habit of withholding information. 

The most that Jack had offered as they walked was a terse “Black Country Dome” when the group had left the crumbling buildings of the city and entered a more rural area, passing by the ruins of what had once seemed to have been a large, grand structure of some kind. Jack hadn’t offered anything else and the group felt that pressing him wouldn’t have amounted to anything anyway. 

While at some points they could push and get answers to their questions, they knew it was one of those times where Jack gave what he wanted and held back what he wasn’t willing to give. All they could do was trust that he was leading them somewhere safe and warm. For a second, Ianto entertained the thought that Jack was leading the group straight to the Ritz before quickly dismissing the image from his head for its improbability. Though knowing some of the things that Jack was capable of, there was a part of him that wouldn’t be too surprised if something like that happened.

It was a few kilometres past the ruins of the Black Country Dome when the group came across a sign of life. Or rather, a sign that provided evidence that someone who was alive once stood where they currently did.

It was literally a metal sign, crudely attached to a pole that was rammed into the dirt.

 _Go Away,_ the handwriting on the sign said in big, bold letters.

Jack paid the sign no attention and strolled past it without a second look, but the rest of the group eyed it cautiously before continuing to follow. Owen, in particular, flicked the side of the sign as he passed.

“Um, Jack?” Tosh said. “When you said you knew a place, did you mean that, you know, you actually knew a place we could stay? Or is this one of your things where it’s all contingent on someone not shooting you when they see your face?”

Jack’s lips quirked, obviously finding humour in her question. “Tosh, I promise. No one is getting shot. And if someone does, it definitely will not be me.”

“Just checking. Because when it comes to you, these things are good to know.”

“What?” Jack said grinning, his good mood clearly restored for the moment. “Toshiko Sato, are you saying I’m trouble?”

Instead of replying, Tosh only pointed her chin at another sign that they were walking past. This one, similar to the last, stated: _SERIOUSLY. GO AWAY! YOU ARE NOT WELCOME._

Instead of assuaging Tosh’s fears, Jack only laughed, wiggling his eyebrows at her unimpressed face as he pushed forward and continued past the foreboding sign.

Tosh mentally prepared for the appearance of a gun or a disgruntled ex-lover. After she thought out the probability of the scenarios, she sighed. It was most likely going to be both.

* * *

The place that Jack knew where they could stay in the year 200,101 was apparently a small and abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere. Or at least that was Ianto’s first impression. Because of the signs they had passed, Ianto was half prepared to be greeted by someone brandishing a gun who was completely willing to use it on Jack, a sentiment he was sure the others shared. But to his surprise, the cabin seemed to be completely abandoned. 

With some quick fiddling on his wrist, Jack opened the door to the cabin and ushered the others in. 

As he stood in the cabin, Ianto thought his first impression was right. The structure was small, just a single room, really. The logs of wood making up the walls and ceiling were clearly chopped by hand, uneven at some places, but overall the sturdiness of its creation presented an impression that the cabin could be trusted to hold up while they were standing in it. 

Looking across the cabin, Ianto silently catalogued what was available to his eyes.

In the corner, there was a camp bed with a few blankets folded on it, similar to the one Jack had down in his bunker back at the Hub. 

There was a nightstand next to the bed, with something that looked like a voice recorder, a small tablet, matches, and a clear bottle of what he guessed to be some sort of alcohol scattered across.

A small table, with only one chair, tucked in.

A dresser, against the wall. Next to it, a wooden chest.

Various lamps scattered around the cabin that Jack was in the process of lighting with matches he had taken from the nightstand.

A makeshift stove on one side of the cabin, with a fridge fitted next to it.

Another cabinet, looking like it would hold a few plates and cutlery.

The sparseness of it all said that only one person had ever lived in the cabin, though Ianto guessed that the person, whoever it was, was long gone judging by the layer of dust gathered on the small table. Privately, Ianto expected more from the 201st century, the sort of voice-activated AI or mind-bending tech that he saw in 21st-century cheesy sci-fi shows, but given that the century apparently couldn’t even fix any of the buildings they had walked past, Ianto wondered if his expectations were too high. It was weird to think that Torchwood’s archives seemed to be more advanced than anything in this cabin.

“Settle in,” Jack said to the group once they had all shuffled in the small space. “I’m going to check on some things outside. It’s been a while since anybody has been here.” Without waiting for a reply, he placed the containment box with the rip engine on the floor by the door then exited the cabin, shutting the door behind him.

“Well, isn’t that just like Jack,” Owen drawled, settling down on the floor, his head leaning against the drawer. Gwen plopped down unceremoniously next to him, shoving Owen with her shoulders while Tosh took the single chair in the cabin.

“Stop it,” Gwen ordered. “It’s bad enough that we’re thousands of years away from home. Save your pettiness for when we get back to Cardiff.”

“Yeah, alright,” Owen said, conceding the point. “But since we’re not going anywhere- Ianto come here.”

“What for?” Ianto said, confused but already moving towards Owen.

“I didn’t get to check you out back at the wreckage. So I’m doing it now. You too, Tosh.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “Oh come off it. I’m fine. Really. And you don’t even have any medical supplies with you anyway.”

“Let me just look you over, okay?” Owen argued. “You’re not invincible like our mysterious wonder boy, Captain Jack Harkness.”

Ianto opened his mouth, prepared to respond with the sarcastic comment necessary for dealing with Owen when a pleasant but unfamiliar voice suddenly pierced the air: “Looking for Captain Jack Harkness”.

Owen swore. Ianto jerked his head. Gwen yelped an undignified sound. Only Tosh, sitting in the chair, seemed unfazed.

The four of them traced the sound back to the tablet sitting on the nightstand, which was helped by the fact that it was now glowing.

“Great,” Gwen sighed. “This one better not float in the air.”

“Search complete,” the voice from the tablet spoke again. “One result found for Captain Jack Harkness in _The Rise and Fall of the Hope Foundation_ by Silo Crook. Do you wish to play?”

The four of them looked at each other. There was an article about Jack. In the year 200,101. 

A series of questions rapidly flew through Ianto’s mind, all of them jumbling together in a tangled mess that even he couldn’t make them out from one another. A part of him wanted to immediately turn off the tablet, take it outside, and bury it six feet underground. When Jack had left, right after Abaddon, Ianto had been relentless in searching for him. A large bit of that led him to investigate Jack himself: who he was, where he had come from, and the things he had done. And while there was actually very little information available to be found about Jack, which a large part of Ianto suspected was because the information had been destroyed by the man himself, what he did find Ianto had wholeheartedly consumed.

But in the months after Jack had come back to Torchwood and to him, Ianto had put away his extracurricular research about Jack, hoping that the man would be willing to open up to him now that they were...something. And to an extent, Jack really had.

There were times on dates where Jack painted vivid images of his adventures across the galaxy and nights in between the sheets where he wove stories of his childhood on his unnamed home planet without Ianto having to prompt him. And slowly but surely, Jack’s stories became less about mind-bending sex with some exotic alien species and more about the wonders that he had seen travelling across the vast expanse of the galaxy. So Ianto knew that progress was being made, but there was still that part of him that felt like there was always a part of Jack that was just out of reach and that every time he got close, it moved a little bit farther away.

Looking around at the others, Ianto saw that they would go with whatever he decided. Thinking closely about his decision, the emotions and misgivings in Ianto’s mind waged war against each other with no clear winner. But the curiosity burned inside of him like a steel iron against his heart and Ianto knew he had his answer.

“Um, yes,” Ianto said. “Yes please.”

The tablet darkened for a moment, before lightening up again. A different voice spoke this time- a girl’s voice, someone who was clearly young. 

“Jack Harkness. Some call him captain, though if he was ever a soldier he lost his regiment the night the sky turned to fire. If you want to fix something, sometimes you have to break it even more. You have to strip it back to rebuild. That’s what happened to Earth. Before they were beaten, the Daleks bombed whole continents. Now we have new enemies: starvation, ruin, radiation. Harkness lives in a small cabin a couple of kilometres away from the ruins of the Black Country Dome. He refuses company, even though he could claim a hero's welcome if he only chose to. I’ve never really met a hero before. I wonder if they’re all this angry.”

Ianto felt the words wash over him, sinking in one by one. Now all of the crumbled building and lack of life around them made sense. Daleks. 

He had heard the horror stories about the Daleks and knew that they had been there at Canary Wharf the same day as the Cybermen, but he himself had not ever seen them in person, though it was probably for the best. Ianto wasn’t sure that he would have survived encountering two alien species intent on conquering the world at the same time. He already felt lucky enough for getting himself and Lisa out of there.

But while the narration coming from the tablet answered questions about the destruction they had seen on the way to the cabin, it didn’t explain why Jack was in the article or the fact that he knew where they could find an empty cabin at what seemed to be the end of the world. 

Nothing in the narration made sense to Ianto. For one, he was sure that Jack had mentioned being from the 51st century, not the 201th. And Jack antisocial and angry? Ianto knew that Jack had bad days where he didn’t want company but he never knew Jack to shun people altogether.

This Jack Harkness, whoever he was, was someone that Ianto didn’t know. Of course, the small voice at the back of his mind whispered _maybe you still don’t._

Ianto shoved that thought down, refusing to entertain any bit of it, and became grateful when Gwen spoke, talking over the recording.

“This is his cabin,” Gwen blurted out to the group. “All of this. He must’ve built it.”

The realisation washed over the group as all of them besides Gwen made connections implied by the narration. Jack Harkness, living in a small cabin a few kilometres away from the Black Country Dome. The ruins of which Jack had pointed out as they had walked here.

“But that means… the signs,” Tosh said. “If he built the cabin, he must’ve built the signs too. The ones that told us to go away.”

No one had anything to say to that or knew what to say to it, and the four of them went back to being quiet. They returned to listen again to whoever Silo Crook was, her narration moving on to explain the finer points of the Hope Foundation.

With another piece of the puzzle handed to him, Ianto desperately wanted to know more, to know if the narrator, Silo Crook, was a friend or a past lover. But his mind was still stuck on trying to wrap his head around the fact that he was sitting in Jack’s cabin. A cabin on Earth in the year 200,101.

With a new, critical eye, Ianto looked around the cabin again.

There was the bottle of alcohol on the nightstand, more than halfway empty even though the Jack that Ianto knew only drank after a bad day or a really good one.

The singular chair tucked into the table, looking more lonesome than Ianto had first thought.

The dresser, which made Ianto want to go over and open up, just to see if another World War Two greatcoat hung on a hanger or if blue shirts and red braces laid in the drawers.

The entire cabin, clearly built for functionality and not as a home. Ianto wondered at how long Jack had spent living here.

He returned his attention to Silo Crook’s voice, the narration now going over her infiltration of something she called Trear Station. But then there were sounds of footsteps outside that grew audibly louder and Ianto knew in his heart that it was Jack making his way back to the cabin.

Even though Ianto wanted to know more, to learn the things about Jack that he would never willingly give, Ianto ordered the tablet to stop.

Yet again, the more they learned about Jack the more questions they inevitably had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that entire chunk of paragraph narrated by Silo Crook abt Jack is lifted verbatim from BF's The Year After I Died (it's so good I had to)


	3. chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to nik for beta reading this chap!! (and the rest of this fic)

Despite it being God knows what hour in the early morning - it was hard to tell, what with the near-darkness of the cabin - Ianto laid on the ground fully awake, his eyes burning a hole into the ceiling above him. He couldn’t sleep, not when the recording he had heard earlier replayed over and over again in his mind, leaving him unable to drift off to a peaceful slumber. Or maybe that was just because of Gwen’s snores from where she laid next to him - Ianto couldn’t quite tell. Either way, it meant that he was uncomfortably aware of the cold, hard floor of the cabin underneath him and the body heat from being sandwiched between Gwen and Owen underneath the blanket all three of them were sharing. Only Tosh, sleeping on the camp bed, was lucky enough to get her own pillow and blanket, though Ianto was just grateful that the cabin had two blankets for them to share rather than only the one.

Jack, however, didn’t even have a blanket at all and was just peacefully reclining in the wooden chair that was tucked into the small table at the far side of the cabin. But with him sleeping there while wearing a fresh blue shirt that he had pulled out of the dresser to replace his bloody, torn one, Ianto thought Jack’s face had never seemed so relaxed. If he was even asleep, that is.

It was hard to be sure, especially since there had been times in Ianto’s flat where he had woken up in the middle of the night to find Jack sitting beside him on the bed reading a book or frowning over a crossword. He had never raised Jack’s seemingly lack of need for sleep with the man, simply accepting it as it was, but he had also internally come to the conclusion that Jack didn’t need sleep quite like everyone else. It was just one more curious thing about Jack that Ianto kept on a long list in the back of his mind. A long list that, truth be told, he would never admit that he filed away in the first place unless it was to Gwen and she had first plied him with a few pints.

It was this tendency to let things go unspoken that had meant that when Jack had re-entered the cabin, bouncing in with vegetables in his arms because apparently there was a garden in the back, neither he nor the three others made any attempt to speak out loud any of the information they had just heard. Even Gwen, who out of the trio, could be counted on the most often to push Jack for information, had kept silent. And so, the meal Jack had somehow managed to whip up on the cabin’s rickety stove had largely been met with quiet and halfhearted conversation.

Ianto had made the excuse, when Jack had questioned the uncharacteristic unresponsiveness of the group, that the day’s events had simply exhausted the team too much for them to carry on with their usual banter. And even if that wasn’t strictly a lie, Ianto still couldn’t sleep a wink as he laid on the hard ground of the cabin.

“I can hear your thoughts rattling around in your head from here,” Jack said, his words soft as they travelled through the air but still unexpected enough to startle Ianto. He jolted and then winced as his shoulder bumped into Gwen’s side, not waking her up but causing her snore to grow a little louder. Turning to look up at Jack where he sat at the chair, Ianto saw that his eyes were wide open, no longer attempting to give off the pretence of sleep.

“Jack,” Ianto said, bracing his weight onto the back of his forearms so he could face Jack instead of the ceiling while they talked. “What is this place, really?”

Based on the recording that he had heard earlier in the day, he was fairly certain that he knew, but there were some things in life that were better heard straight from the horse’s mouth. Especially when that horse was Jack. Well, if Ianto was telling the truth, most times it was actually better to hear things about Jack not from the man himself, because he had a propensity to lie and deflect that could almost be considered pathological.

Accordingly, the pause in the air that followed Ianto’s words gave him the inkling that Jack was gathering his thoughts to either deflect, bullshit his way through the conversation, or both.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said, confirming Ianto’s suspicion. “What does matter is-”

“Of course it matters,” Ianto said, interrupting Jack’s spiel and staring him straight in the eyes. “We’re a hundred thousand years away from home, Earth is a wreck, and there’s not even coffee in this cabin.” He took a deep breath, trying to channel the stubbornness Gwen took on whenever she confronted Jack with something he didn’t want to talk about. “You have to trust us, Jack. We never really talked about what happened with Abaddon, never really had the chance to, but… we messed up. We know that. And-”

“This isn’t about Abaddon.”

“Isn’t it? We betrayed you, and now, you don’t trust us.”

“It’s not like that,” Jack insisted. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and clasped his hands in front of him, suddenly reminding Ianto of all the times Jack had ever interrogated a suspect in that position during an investigation, intentionally using his aggressiveness as a defense against any potential resistance. “I told you, I’ve already forgiven you for that. You, Tosh, Gwen, Owen. All of you.”

“Really? ‘Cause once, I misplaced my sister’s jumper and she still found ways to use that against me years later. Owen, Gwen, Tosh, and I mutinied and then opened the Rift, letting a death-demon into Cardiff. How could you not hold that against us?”

“It’s pretty simple. I just don’t.”

“ _Jack_.”

“I’m immortal, Ianto,” Jack said, his voice serious and firm. “Which means I don’t age. I don’t die. All I do is watch as everybody in the world passes me by: friends, lovers, everyone.” He looked away, as if the truth he was saying was too painful for him to sustain the direct eye contact. “It means that I’ve learned to take what I can get, in the time the people around me have. Grudges tend to get in the way of all of that.”

The words came out harsh but honest, and Ianto found himself slowly chewing over the truths Jack had offered up. “It must be tough living like that,” he said after a few seconds, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “Never letting yourself get mad because you feel like that’s just time you’re wasting.”

Jack gave a one shouldered shrug, still avoiding any eye contact with Ianto. “Compared to what I get in return, it’s nothing.”

“Is it though?” Ianto asked skeptically. “Then what was all this about?” The confusing lack of specificity in the words made Jack glance at him questioningly, prompting Ianto to elaborate. “The cabin, I mean.” He paused, unsure whether to mention the recording that had played earlier, but then decided to include it in his response, not wanting to taint this rare honest conversation with a lie by omission. “When you were out, we… uh… happened upon a voice recording from the tablet on the side table. It was about you and the Hope Foundation. By someone named Silo Crook.”

“I see,” Jack said, and the tone of his voice told Ianto that he knew exactly what Ianto was talking about.

“We didn’t hear all of it. But… it gave us the impression that this cabin was yours. A cabin, built for a single occupant, kilometres away from the nearest sign of life, on a destroyed Earth, and which has pretty intense warnings posted up the closer a person gets. While it does sort of remind me of your room in the Hub in a way, for some reason I’m sensing that it’s not the same.”

Jack hummed, unclasping his hands to run them over the surface of the table in a way that gave off the impression he was stalling for time. Ianto thought that if it wasn’t for them being in the middle of nowhere, stuck on a destroyed Earth, Jack would’ve physically left the cabin by now just to not have to have this conversation with him. But the fact that he even was, instead of ignoring it completely, was a step forward in Ianto’s opinion. Though he was consciously aware that a step forward was sometimes accompanied by two steps backwards.

“I built this a long time ago,” Jack said finally, reluctance seeping through his voice. “I was younger then.”

“And younger you wasn’t a people person?” Ianto asked, trying not to dwell on exactly how young Jack meant by him being “younger.” He could’ve been referring to himself at age twenty or two hundred - Ianto had no way of knowing.

“Oh, I was always a people person,” Jack said, giving a lascivious smile before quickly becoming serious again. “But no, it’s not that. I just… I needed some time. There were a few things that I needed to figure out. A lesson that I had to learn.”

“What kind of lesson?”

“One I’ll probably have to learn again one day but not anytime soon,” Jack said, edging around the question again.

Ianto couldn’t quite see clearly through the darkness that pervaded the cabin, but he thought he could see the lines of Jack’s jaw tighten. Though it didn’t actually matter if it did - Ianto knew he was reaching Jack’s threshold for personal questions.

“Do you have any ideas on how we’re getting to get home?” Ianto asked, pivoting the other topic occupying his mind.

Jack let his hands fall from the table, leaning back in his chair. “We’ll figure it out, I’m sure. We always do.”

“Tosh could do something with that rip engine, I bet. If anyone can, it’s her.”

It was a good idea, at least to Ianto, but strangely enough, if the silence that followed was any indication, Jack didn’t seem to agree.

“Possibly,” Jack said after a short pause. “But right now, you should go to sleep, Ianto. Get some rest while you still can,” he continued, closing the conversation with a tired tone that left no room for any arguments that Ianto might have.

Ianto frowned, internally gearing up to challenge Jack, but then decided that this was one of those things that was probably better with Gwen, Owen, and Tosh awake. If anything, having them conscious meant that they could pin down Jack on the ground while they shouted at him and aired all their grievances about trust and friendship. So filing away this in his mind, he gently laid himself back onto the floor of the cabin, and did exactly what Jack told him to do - sleep.


	4. chapter four

Breakfast was an eggy affair. Not real eggs, which Ianto found unfortunate, but reconstituted eggs that left a slick, slimy feeling as it went down the throat. The worst part, he found, was not the taste of eggs that remained in the throat afterwards but the fact that there wasn’t even any coffee to wash it down. That alone made him miss the twenty-first century.

But it was the surprising amount of guests in the cabin that made the breakfast an interesting one.

Ianto hadn’t thought there was a single person in a ten kilometre radius of the cabin, but he was proved wrong when not one but two visitors had shown up knocking on the cabin’s door with a strange amount of relief flooding visibly in both of their eyes when Jack had answered it.

Now these visitors, a woman and a man, stood awkwardly in the middle of the cabin while the rest of Torchwood did their best to swallow down the heap of barely edible reconstituted eggs on their plates.

“Everyone, this is Malfi Pryn, “ Jack said, gesturing to the man who gave a small wave to the group. “And that’s Silo Crook.”

“Hang on,” Gwen said, pointing her fork at the two newcomers. “Silo Crook, like-” she cut off with a small cough, remembering that the recording they’d heard was something that they had silently and collectively decided not to mention to Jack.

“It’s fine,” Ianto assured her awkwardly. “I, um, told Jack last night.” He turned towards Silo with what he hoped was a welcoming expression on his face. “I’m Ianto Jones. We heard a recording made by you last night about the Hope Foundation.”

“Oh, did you!” Silo said, her voice full of excitement. “Did you like it? I thought some of it may be a little overkill, but it’s important stuff, y’know? And it had a lot of heart, too, especially Jack’s speech at the end. It-” she broke off, embarrassed at her rambling. “Sorry. Even after everything, it’s like, Captain Jack Harkness! Talking to me! I can still hardly believe it. Don’t you all get that feeling sometimes?”

“Um,” Owen said, raising his hand as if to ask a question. “Owen Harper, here. Have we got our signals crossed? Are you sure we’re talking about the same Jack Harkness? The one standing right there?”

Silo blinked, thrown by the question. “Who else would I be talking about? There’s only one Jack Harkness that anybody on Earth knows.”

“Seriously? Okay, now I know you’re having me on.”

“No, really!” Malfi said, jumping in. “He is a hero. And not just because of what he did protecting Earth from the Daleks. When Trear Station was falling and the only way to fix the shields was probably going to kill the person who tried, he still did it, even though he told us that he was afraid of dying! And then-”

“I think that’s enough,” Jack said, cutting Malfi off mid-sentence to Ianto’s disappointment.

“No, no,” Gwen said while waving off Jack, intrigued by Malfi’s words as much as Ianto was. “Please continue, I want to hear this.”

“Or,” Jack responded, turning to face Silo and Malfi directly, “we can stop burning daylight and get to why you two are here. Not that I’m mad, but it is sort of unexpected.”

“You’re telling me!” Silo said. “This place has been empty since you left months ago. We almost stopped coming around.”

“Months, huh?” Ianto said, side-eying Jack, who ignored the comment.

“Where have you been in all that time?” Silo continued, looking at Jack questioningly.

“Travelling.” The group waited for Jack to expand on his reply, but nothing else came.

“Well,” Silo said, glancing at Malfi before looking back at Jack. “We’re here because we kind of need your help. Again.”

“With what?”

“The Hope Foundation. It’s still preying on people. Even worse than before what happened on Trear Station.”

Jack frowned. “But Trear Station was the Hope Foundation. After the station’s destruction, the foundation should’ve been done for. There was nothing left.”

“But that’s not exactly true, is it? Gorky and Vortia Trear got off the station, remember? We let them go.” Silo looked towards the rest of the Torchwood team, who all wore confused expressions on their face, elaborating: “Vortia Trear was the founder of the Hope Foundation. Gorky was her assistant. Basically, their whole thing was about resettling humanity to the outer planets, but anyone who went on the station never came back because the foundation was really just exploiting people for their organs.”

“They took my eyes,” Malfi said helpfully. “But I got new ones, thanks to Jack!”

“Wait a second,” Tosh said in realization, ignoring Malfi’s comment along with all the others in the room. “Yesterday, when we first came here, there was a floating screen thing. Anybody remember that? It was from the Hope Foundation.”

“Yeah,” Gwen said, mulling the previous day’s events in her mind. “It was.”

“So?” Jack said, not seeing the issue. “It got rebuilt. It’s unfortunate but not unprecedented.”

“Them rebuilding the foundation isn’t the issue; it’s how they rebuilt it,” Silo argued. “They did it remarkably quickly, more quickly than they should have been able to, and they’ve dodged catastrophes and controversies that have taken down other similar organizations. The weirdest thing is, Vortia Trear hasn’t been seen in public since the destruction of the station. Normally, she’s always promoting her charity, meeting people - that sort of thing - but there hasn’t been a real sighting of her. Even the advertisements and press conferences she’s held are never in real time. They’re all old speeches cut together, _pretending_ to be a recent recording.”

“Maybe she’s just very private now.”

“Maybe,” Silo conceded. “But I talked to a few employees who work at the new Hope Foundation Building that got built after Trear Station went kaboom, and apparently, no one except the janitorial staff is allowed on the top floor, which she hardly ever leaves. And for a woman who used to care so much about her public image, it’s kind of strange that she’s always holed away, don't you think?”

Jack straightened subtly, pulling himself together in the way Ianto had come to understand that he was slowly being swayed by the argument presented to him but wasn’t quite ready to yield.

“Strange, sure, but she did just barely escape with her life when she thought she was going to die on the station,” Jack pointed out. “That’s just her paranoia and fear manifesting. She builds herself a little hide-away from the world, refuses company, and just wants to live out the life she’s grateful to still have. That’s nothing new.”

“And I suppose you’re speaking from experience?”

“What makes you think that?” Jack said, the tone in his voice carefully nonchalant, though it held a hint of something else underneath. It took a few seconds for Ianto to place the subtle undertones of Jack’s words, but when he did, he realized why it took so long for him to recognize what lurked below - Jack was uncomfortable and anxious. Those were two emotions that Jack hardly ever showed or seemed to feel. Or at least, he was usually better at hiding when he did.

As if Silo could sense the same thing Ianto could, she changed tactics and continued onto the next part of her argument.

“Jack, if she was really still alive, then it’s a little weird that Gorky suddenly came into a whole lot of money right after the station crash, wouldn’t you think?”

“So she gave him a reward for saving her life.”

“He didn’t just come into money; he essentially got access to everything Vortia Trear ever owned. I kept tabs on him the last few months. Every house, property, and title that was underneath her name, he got. And he wasn’t shy about flaunting it, either. He left the biggest money trail across the intergalactic planets. But something happened. Something bad, I think, because it scared him into hiding away into one of Vortia Trear’s Earthbound properties with what seems like a hundred guards. No one goes in, no one ever comes out.”

“Well, of course,” Ianto said, deadpan. “It makes sense that no one ever comes out if no one goes in.”

Silo rolled her eyes. “Not the point! But while Gorky locks himself away, the Hope Foundation keeps on running, selling false hope and exploiting everyone they can. They just have a big fancy headquarters instead of a space station now.”

“And you think Gorky is behind everything?” Jack questioned, eyebrows raised.

“I think Gorky knows what’s going on,” Silo corrected. “But Malfi and I can’t get close. The house that Gorky’s staying in? Practically a fortress. Like I said, there are guards crawling everywhere.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Malfi added. “If anyone can help us get in, it’s you.”

Jack hesitated, rubbing his jaw in contemplation. “Well,” he said, glancing at Ianto. “Why not? What else are we going to do?”

“Um, find our way back home?” Owen interjected. He looked towards Silo and Malfi, explaining: “We’ve actually come all the way from the twenty-first century. Big accident, destroyed car, you understand. This little vacation was fun, sure, but it’s time we get back.”

“Owen!” Gwen chidded. “Look, I want to get back to the twenty-first century as much as anybody. I’ve got a wedding to plan, and _nothing_ will stop me and Rhys getting on that altar. But if we can help, we should.” She looked around the room to see if anybody wanted to challenge her on that, but not a single person made a move to do so.

“That’s settled then,” she said, turning to grin at Silo and Malfi. “We’ve got guns, a rip engine, and powdered eggs. We’ve done more with less. So how do we get in?”

“Not a clue,” Silo said, her gratefulness and exuberance shining through her wide smile. “But I’m sure together we can think of something.”

* * *

The house that Silo and Malfi assured the group that Gorky was currently residing in was, to everybody’s relief, only a few kilometres away from the cabin, resulting in the trip to what ended up being a grandiose nightmare of a house requiring little else besides walking. But to Ianto, who had the rip engine carefully tucked away in his suit trouser pocket, out of its containment box as it was considered too bulky to take with, each step during the walk sparked a small feeling of panic. Jack had assured him that it was unlikely to go off again unexpectedly like the day before, but the part of his mind where his anxiety was nestled jumped with each jostle of his pants.

After working so long for Torchwood, Ianto was fairly adept at managing his fears and anxieties. After all, it was a job that required one facing the unimaginable on an almost daily basis. It was also a job that usually didn’t let them find conveniently open front doors for them to walk into when they needed one, but to everybody’s surprise, that’s exactly what they found. In fact, it was the only thing, really, since there weren't even any neighbouring houses or patrolling guards for them to circumvent - just an open, inviting front door promising to lead them straight to Gorky.

“So much for guards,” Jack said, arching an amused eyebrow at Silo after stepping through the open door.

Silo frowned, following Jack into the large reception the front door fed directly into. “This definitely doesn’t feel right. It shouldn’t be so easy to get in. And like you said, where are all the guards? They should be crawling around this place.”

Her question went momentarily unanswered as the rest of the group followed them through the door, but Ianto soon had a response for her.

“Here’s one,” Ianto called out to the group, pointing to a fallen body that was half hidden behind a ugly, gold coloured couch. There wasn’t a sign or anything that labelled the body as one of Gorky’s guards, but Ianto thought the black uniform and holstered gun provided him pretty strong evidence for his statement.

He bent down, pressing two fingers down on the underside of the man’s jaw, attempting to find a pulse, if there was one to find. After waiting a few seconds to confirm, he stood back up, declaring to the rest of the group: “He’s just unconscious.”

“You know,” Jack grimly responded, pulling out his Webley, “I have a feeling that there’s a trail of bodies for us to follow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fact: silo and malfi are the only characters who drink their respect jack juice


End file.
